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Chllin' with Dylan

Adams County pride and more baseball changes

By DYLAN MALONE
I am once again overly impressed with how talented our wrestlers are in this part of the state. It can’t be overstated just how much success breeds success, especially in a team sport like wrestling.
Adams County was the bane of every other wrestling team in the region on Saturday when they dominated the sectional tournament at Jay County High School.
How badly did the three schools terrorize the rest of the field?
Between Adams Central, Bellmont, and South Adams, the three schools finished with 647 team points. The rest of the field of six teams? 575…
No matter which school you find your allegiances lie, there has to be a certain amount of “county pride” in the amount of wrestlers who are still alive in the individual tournament. Out of a total of 56 wrestlers moving on to the regionals this Saturday, 31 spots are from Adams County. That’s 55% for you math whizzes.
Breaking that down by school, the sectional champion Jets earned 13 placements, all but one spot, from their starting roster for the regionals. Despite the Braves’ end of a dominating run of titles, they still send nine wrestlers forward to this Saturday’s Jay County sectional. South Adams also netted nine top four wrestlers moving on to Jay County.
There is a great chance that more than a dozen wrestlers from Adams County will get to as far as the state level. What a fantastic opportunity to bring even more clout to this county in a wrestling state that already underestimates these three schools on a yearly basis.

Pitching change...
Shifting gears, baseball is making another effort to speed the game up by changing a rule that’s been a part of the pitcher’s arsenal for decades.
According to a new rule change made by the committee in charge of such things for the MLB, the pick-off move that involves faking to third base and throwing to first base has now been deemed a balk.
There is not a whole lot of talk in the off-season or during that involves the pitcher’s movements. Most rule changes in the last few years have revolved around the newly instituted replay system that the MLB has been years behind on in comparison to other major sports.
What’s the league’s big theory on this? Game speed.
What is happening to the game of baseball on television is that for the last decade it has slowed down to the point of being unbearably boring. In order to pay for the amount of beefy contracts for players, coaches, staff, and other network deals, the television affiliates are forced to show more and more commercials in between innings.
Anyone who has been to a live professional baseball game in the last few years will notice that the players warm up a bit longer on the field between innings. It has gotten to the point that instead of having commercials to fill the time between switching sides, the teams have to wait for the commercials to get done to begin the next inning. The same thing has happened to basketball as the game now has “TV timeouts” at strategic points in the broadcast to break up the times that play goes without stoppage for awhile.
Instead of trying to get the pitchers to move the game along with less base checks, my suggestion would be to charge the advertisers more money to be on during the baseball games. Less commercials, same money, faster game. Just a thought.
Baseball is a dying sport, in general, right now because of controversy using performance-enhancing suppliments. Ray Lewis is being accused of using deer antler spray during Super Bowl week so naturally the MLB has to keep pace and have reports of several key players using no-nos including A-rod (again) and Melky Cabrera (again).
Are we even surprised anymore? The shock value is officially gone for me as far as steroids. Baseball no longer has a black-eye, it's a bum on the street too weak to get up to use the restroom. It's depressing for me, a lifetime baseball fan, to see the game fall to such sad lows, especially when kids in this part of the world were just starting to get back into baseball youth leagues.

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